4-12v OBC vs 6-8v OBC

[Volt_Ampere]

IMO, the concept of the OBC is a poor design. Get rid of it and get a good smart charger.

[CP241]

Originally Posted by jerseyforlife

That was part of the reason for my question, I have multiple cases of customers being told it "should work on your cart with 6-8v" but they get it and nothing works. Ive brought this up a few times to the higher ups and im told "its probably something with their cart then". To me that makes no sense, then if i ask why they only need to bypass the OBC with 4-12v, I get told "the algorithm is different". Im no electronics master but Ive taken a few years of electrical engineering so im not clueless but I cant see the OBCs being so different that we need to bypass one but not the other.

I know i could considerably reduce the amount of tech calls and reduce the warranties we do on club car chargers because if they have 6-8v and our charger doesnt work, we just send another hoping it will work (it usually dosent so they send it back and get a refund)

Exactly what fairtax said someone didn’t completely validate their research, and sales decided they get more hits “compatible with OBC” vs requiring the customer to cut and splice wires to bypass the thing. I don’t “do work” myself anymore (unless it’s for my own enjoyment) but I do train repair techs how to diagnose and repair electrical failures in new model launch vehicles. I train everyone from veteran repair guys with 40 sometimes 50 years of experience to brand new guys never worked on a car before in their life (literally). I (and many folks here) frequently tend to forget how difficult it is for the average person to do something as simple and basic as strip and splice a wire. Something that takes us 5 minutes could take them hours to do if just trying to follow a poorly written one pager install sheet with a “bypass kit”.

But I’m getting a little off subject.

All you can do is document all the cases you’ve had where it doesn’t work. Put together a matrix or something of the sort to track failures. It helps to have a column in your matrix to track if the old charger worked before or not, and maybe if you have them on the phone ask why they decided to upgrade.

Then once you have some data to prove your side, present it in a non-confrontational way. Because, as you know, and volt_ampere will agree since he’s obviously in the field, engineers are ALWAYS right and questioning their right-hood is an insult to humanity

instead, present it in the form of a problem you need their help to solve… show there’s a significant number of people that have to bypass the OBC to make the charger work, despite the claims that it should be compatible. This is a customer satisfaction problem to improve product perception because it works as designed the first time. let them think they discovered a problem and the solution is bypassing the OBC on everything.

Sometimes you gotta play the game to get things done and it can suck, but it’s all part of the fun :)

[SouthCo]

OP, maybe you can get them to update the marketing. Good luck…